The Girl White With Bandages
by Firestar9mm
Summary: For the part of me that huddles in train stations, in the rain, waits for the traffic lights to change. I didn't know we had so much in common, Rei.


The Girl White With Bandages  
  
*****  
  
No one, not even the rain, has such small hands. (e.e. cummings)  
  
*****  
  
The world, at present, to her, was blocked on one side, a padded fuzzy whiteness. Not that there was anything to see at the moment, save glaring ceiling, save haloed lights.  
  
Her wolfish hair was disturbed by wrapped bandages. Her arm was held close to her body, as if it were a broken wing, something to be protected till it could carry her away.  
  
All this in itself did not bother her. Not being able to work, however, did.   
  
The wheels on the floor went squeak. Each small shake when the techs wheeled her over the joins in the floor tiles was like a little earthquake.  
  
What was she if not an Eva pilot? If not the First Child? She was simply a husk, a bandaged shell.  
  
His words had come to her in a sort of Doppler shift, over the comm and not truly for her ears, rising and falling as though on waves. "She's not dead yet."  
  
"You will do it again."  
  
She would do it again. She wasn't dead yet, but if she could not pilot her Eva she had nothing, which was the same as being dead. Possibly worse.  
  
He could bet she would do it again.  
  
The Eva was her link to him. She had nothing else. A link to a world where someone cared...  
  
*****  
  
It had started out normally enough. She'd been in her Eva, preparing for activation.   
  
Not then or ever would she be able to remember exactly what had gone wrong, though she suspected Ritsuko did; her eyes would flick nervously back and forth like radar before coming to rest on the pale pilot of Unit-00.  
  
At any rate, her mind gave her no reason and no exact time, then or ever after, that the Eva had raised its metal hands to its faceplate and shrieked. A sound of pain. The movement jerked its passenger in LCL, the sound tearing her heart, but the shudder of the metal god as it pulled free of its restraints filled her with something new-fear.  
  
She was dimly aware of shouting beneath her, beneath the rampaging giant. Ritsuko was barking orders as fast as she could suck in breath, having backup plans ready even before her earlier suggestions were refuted by a breathless tech.  
  
"Suspend contact! Open all circuits through six!"  
  
"We CAN'T," the tech cried. "It's rejecting the signal! It's not working!"  
  
One voice rose above the din, reverberating with pain.  
  
"Rei!"  
  
The howl knifed through her, through the fear that washed over her unbidden.   
  
"Unit-00 is out of control!"  
  
Out of control. That was what it must mean to be spinning as she was, tossed about like a doll. A sack of something hard and misshapen. No. That was her own bones, being viciously slammed about in the small space. The world was a shining, spinning whiteness, a rolling blur.  
  
"Rei!"  
  
Was this what it was like to be born? Thrown wildly about, body thrashing against its will in pain, wet and a mess? The dull clangs of body against metal filled her ears in some sort of soothing rhythm, like the waves on the shore. Pain claimed her parts fast, then faster.  
  
"Rei!"  
  
A final heavy sound. There was something sad and permanent about it.   
  
Out of control. That was what it must mean to be like this, lying at the bottom of some deep well. Her mind sent the commands to the body over and over to move, but there was no response. A deliberate disobedience. Out of control.  
  
That was how he found her, shaking slightly, afraid for her own bones, something thicker than blood ringing her eye, seeping down her neck, coating her skin and slicking down to the tortured metal.  
  
He blinked, once, twice, three times, and she realized he was struggling to see her in the darkness of the plug. She tried to haul herself towards the square of entry door light, but she was weak as water. Her muscles were twitching and jerking beneath her skin, crying not to be disturbed.  
  
"Rei," he said hoarsely, blinking again, "are you all right?"  
  
It was then she noticed his glasses were gone. Where? "Yes, sir..." Her voice was a grain of sand, small and powerless.  
  
"I see. That's good to hear." His face held what his words did not.  
  
*****  
  
The wheels went squeak. Since pain enveloped her body like LCL, sloshed around it, she saw nothing strange about causing a little more by holding tightly to the object clutched in her tiny hands, so hard the pale skin became mottled.  
  
The commander's glasses. Her link. Something.  
  
She would do it again.  
  
*****  
  
This is only my second Eva, so be gentle. Feedback is greatly welcomed; please be constructive. Just say SOMETHING.  
  
Wondergirl, in the beginning, did not strike me as a very likable character. Being too much like Asuka, a solar flare, I found her icy demeanor irritating. However, she shocked me by showing up in the strangest places, seeming to try to win me over. She stared a disapproving line at me while I flirted shamelessly with a gorgeous Asian guy whose cell phone wasn't working. She was across the street, waiting for the light. But it wasn't until she stepped silently behind me in the line at Cinnabon in the mall that we got to talking. She's really quite a comforting presence.  
  
So Rei, join the ranks of the characters who claim some small part of me. Enter my home and be welcome.  



End file.
